Madhya Pradesh's IT grads plan own 'swacch abhiyan'

On a day when PM Narendra Modi will be joined by lakhs of people from across the country to launch ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’, a group of youths, who run a website dealing in scrap materials, will get a shot in their arm for their own 'swachh agenda'.

On a day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be joined by lakhs of people from across the country to launch the ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’, a group of youths, who run a website dealing in scrap materials, will get a shot in their arm for their own 'swachh agenda'.

Five youths, all IT graduates — Anurag Asati, Kavendra Raghuvanshi, Sandeep Raghuvanshi, Probin Anand and Chandrakant Jain — have a website by the name of thekabadiwala.com, whose slogan is 'Why to waste when you can earn and donate'.

They also have a team of about 50 rag pickers across Madhya Pradesh.

Anurag Asati, who currently lives in Bhopal, and hails from Damoh, started this website along with his other four friends. Currently operating in Indore and Bhopal, they plan to launch their services soon in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune. When asked why they started this venture, pats comes the reply, "We want to recycle every recyclable material. We want to donate the material that can be reused again like books, copies etc. We want to resell the material at cheapest price. We want to help the needy by giving him material that we will get in scrap and which is in good condition."

"This is not a business for us; we work for a social cause and on no profit no loss concept. Business is something in which you look for profit but here profit is not our concern," adds Asati.

Asati says, they can be contacted over phone, through message, website, on WhatsApp or through their Facebook page. Once they get the message, they arrive to old newspapers and other scraps as per the convenience of the customer. The Kabadiwala's main aim is to organise the waste management sector which is now haphazard. The website started in February 2013 has till now received more than 10,000 calls/requests.